Barefoot Nation
by Zenelly
Summary: There's something almost obscene about the way he's lounging on the grass. If Zexion mentally took a step back, it wouldn't seem so shocking, seeing a Gypsy boy lying on the ground, but it is, for some reason. GypsyBoy!Demyx and CityBoy!Zexion. Kid!Fic


**Disclaimer: **All the legal stuff that means it's not mine.

**Author's Notes: **I'm sorry this is late, guys, I really am. I really love this story, though and I couldn't wait to get started on it! This… well, this turned out very different on me than I really expected. I like it, all things considered, but it's a little… you'll see. I'm not sure if this is going to live up to anyone's expectations of it. (I might expand on this 'verse later…)

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><p><strong>Barefoot Nation<strong>

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><p>Zexion is a proud boy. He is the smartest child in town, the prodigy of high society. Within moments, he can give the correct depth and breadth of bow to a duke, king, and countess and manage to charm their socks off with only a few words. He is a very civil, calm, and collected child, especially for his age. (He knows, he's been told it many times.) Which makes a particular midafternoon event even more exemplary than it should be.<p>

(Later, Zexion is able to recognize this for what it is, but at the time…)

At the time, Zexion is merely scandalized, eyes wide and face flushed a delicate, practiced red. His hands are shaking with surprise, and he has stopped, stock still in the middle of the market road with people and merchants bustling past him, all because of a single person.

There's something almost obscene about the way he's lounging on the grass, fingers digging into the grass to find the dirt beneath. If Zexion mentally took a step back, it wouldn't seem so shocking, seeing a Gypsy boy lying on the ground, but it is, for some reason. He shakes himself, blinking furiously. It's not as though the boy is nude or something similar. The only things undressed about him are his feet, which are bare and resting on the grass with strands clenched between tanned toes, soles covered in soil and scabs.

Then the boy looks up and waves, a wide smile on his face, cracking the skin of his mouth. "Hey there!"

And Zexion, polite, well-mannered Zexion, says without thinking, "What _are_ you doing?" (He feels like clapping a hand over his mouth the next instant, but he doesn't because Papa said that only little boys show their emotions.)

"What do you mean?" the boy asks, sitting up, shirt wrinkled and stained by the grass beneath him.

"You! You're…," he sputters for a bit, waving his hands up and down at the gypsy boy. "You're indecent! You're practically undressed!"

Blue-green eyes blink at him, their owner glancing down at himself. "Um. My shirt's unbuttoned." After a few seconds he adds, "And I'm not wearing shoes. How am I undressed? I still have my pants on." He stands, brushes himself off, checks himself over one more time. A bracelet on his ankle chimes lightly with his movements, a constant noise. His clothes are wearing through, Zexion notices, thin and see-through in patches.

Suddenly realizing that he never responded, Zexion quickly snaps out, "Well, you should be wearing shoes!"

The blond boy only smiles and shrugs. "Shoes 're over-rated."

Inside the city, a huge bell begins chiming. Zexion whips about on his heel to stalk back inside the city limits before the gates close, calling back over his shoulder, "You should be wearing them anyway."

He barely hears the boy yell back "Okay, I'll see you tomorrow" over the chattering and yammering of the crowd.

(Laying in his rooms at night, he fumes quietly over the audacity of the Gypsy, arrogantly and erroneously presuming that he would be back the next day, (but his last thoughts before slumber are of the sunlit road and the sight of bare hands and feet digging into the ground like the roots of a tree wanting to grow tall.))

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><p>"Knew you'd be back."<p>

"Do be quiet!" Zexion snaps, small hands fisting in the fabric of his coat sleeves where they are hidden from view. He glares at the blonde boy, who is sprawled on the ground again, skin bare to the sunlight shining from above him. "Still no shoes, I see," he says snidely, sniffing and turning his nose up in the air.

The boy shrugs, a common and vulgar gesture that makes it completely clear how much care he has for appearances. (Any of the genteel folk know better than to _shrug_.) "I still don't like 'em. Why should I wear 'em if I don't like 'em?"

Zexion doesn't have an answer, and he hides it by sniffing haughtily, turning his nose up.

"Don't you have _any_ fun?"

Blinking, Zexion only tilts his head at the Gypsy. "Wh-what do you mean? I am a nobleman's son. I have…" he swallows, throat inexplicably heavy. "Duties."

The blond sighs, sitting up with a chime of his anklet. "That's sorta not my point. I have 'duties' too. Don't snort at me, it's true! I hafta brush down the horses and help Ma with food every night! But I still have fun!"

"You lie about all day in the sun. I doubt your duties are that intensive."

He gets a raised eyebrow for that remark. "You've ne'er fed, brushed, and watered fifty horses, have you?" The Gypsy boy finally stands up, slapping dirt off his pants. He straightens with a huff, smile glinting in the tan skin of his face. "So, are you free right now?"

Taken aback, Zexion can't think of a response. "What do you mean?" he asks after a few beats of quiet.

"I mean 'are you free'. To go places. I have somethin' I wanna show you."

The two boys stare at each other, curious cobalt meeting resilient aqua, and from inside the city the bell rings. Zexion turns towards the gate, suddenly unwilling to follow its urging to go inside. "…Your feet are going to get hurt if you don't put shoes on," he mutters.

Shrugging again, the boy replies, "I'll take my chances. Go home, I'll see you tomorrow."

Zexion opens his mouth to say something, but the bell rings again and the guards are calling for everyone to get inside the city gates, so he turns and runs back to the city, the echo of his soft and fashionable leather boots slapping against cobblestone ringing in his ears.

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><p>It takes three weeks before Zexion actively notices that he's been heading outside the gates every day for no other reason than to talk to the Gypsy boy. In that span of time, he's learned the boy's name (Demyx, and he can spell it too, scratching harsh letters out in the dirt), what his favorite color is (blue, since it's like the ocean and the sky and is 'full of wind', whatever that means), and how he takes his tea (which is to say, not at all. Demyx doesn't drink tea. He prefers milk). Demyx dances and the anklet is there to provide music when he chooses to, arms and legs loose and flowing, all constant motion. Watching him dance for the first time nearly sends Zexion running back into the city, embarrassed and mortified beyond all belief. (So much skin, so much <em>movement<em>, and so unrefined!)

Zexion also learns that Demyx _never_ wears shoes. His feet are tough and calloused and _covered _in dirt and he sometimes gets scratches or stubs his toes, but he never puts shoes one.

It drives Zexion insane. He can't figure it out.

So eventually Zexion stomps -gently and mannerly, of course- out to see Demyx past the city gates one afternoon, stops in front of him, taps his foot delicately and demands, "Why don't you ever wear shoes, Demyx?"

Lounging on the grass, as usual, Demyx only rolls to his side, grinning up at the young nobleman. "They're expensive, so we don't get any. Besides," and he sits up, strands of blond hair falling into his eyes, "my feet 're tough enough to be shoes on their own. Unlike yours, Sir Lady-feet!"

"I do _not_ have 'Lady-Feet'!" Zexion stomps his foot on the ground, his lips forming a pout.

Demyx only laughs at him, patting the grass beside him. "C'mon and sit down already, Zexy. Stop foolin' around. Besides. Shoes are like freedom. Either you don't have shoes and you're free, or you have them, and you're not."

Ignoring that remark, Zexion lightly brushes off his coat before stepping off the road as Demyx lies back on the grass. "Why _do_ you never wear shoes? I mean, really, because I know you're lying to me," Zexion asks curiously, sitting on the ground gingerly next to Demyx.

The older boy shrugs, smiling up at the sun. "I think they're wrong."

Tilting his head, Zexion scoffs. "Shoes are shoes. They don't have opinions to be wrong about. You wear them to keep your feet safe, nothing more."

"Zexion, I'm one of the Roma. Safe isn't really an option for me, and besides, you're missing my point. I think there's somethin' wrong with people _wearing _shoes." Demyx sighs and shakes his head, smile still on his lips.

"Something… wrong?"

"Humans are weird, right? We have walls to keep the weather from harming us; we wear clothes to keep the air from touching us. We put glass over our eyes to keep us from seeing as well, and wear shoes to never be able to touch the earth beneath us. Yeah, I think there's something wrong with that." He wiggles his bare toes in the dirt, continuing with, "So, uh, humor me for a day and do somethin' for me? Just… don't wear shoes. Meet me here, and we'll see how you like it."

Zexion blinks, shocked. "You…" he swallows. "You want me to not wear shoes?"

"Yeah. Is that a problem?" Demyx wonders, propping himself up on his elbows, eyes sardonic and laughing.

"N-no, of course not!" Zexion insists, his face warming as a flush steals across his skin. "I can do it!"

Flopping back on the ground, Demyx grins irrepressibly up at the sky. "Good."

So Zexion does. He wears shoes in the morning, when he knows his father can catch him around the house, but the second he leaves the house, he gingerly toes his boots off and sets them under a bush by the door. The pavement is smooth and cool under his feet, and he marvels briefly at the sensation before trotting off into the city. He flexes his toes on the sun-warm cobblestones, the heat of them reminding him of the hot bricks the maids prepare for his family on cold nights in the winter.

He walks everywhere he can think of. To the library, where the padding of his feet is almost silent compared to the tapping noise they usually make; to the market, where Zexion learns quickly to watch other people's movements, because having your foot stepped on _hurts_ and he has to bite back tears; and to the gardens, where he can sit on a bench for a while and avoid stepping on sharp rocks.

(By midmorning, his feet are killing him. They seem to be on fire with the amount of pain they are in.)

Finding a secluded stone bench, Zexion limps over and sits down. He crosses his legs and examines the undersides of his feet, whining softly when he finds the beginnings of no fewer than five blisters, all painful. Gingerly, he sets them down on the grass. Zexion sighs as the cool grass soothes his feet, a welcome contrast to the rapidly heating cobblestones of the city.

But he has to keep moving. He promised Demyx that he would.

He considers breaking that promise when one (and then all) of his blisters bursts, but he doesn't. Zexion is, after all, a nobleman. Highest of his class. Bound by honor. (By the end of it, Zexion wants to kill Demyx.) Gingerly, Zexion hobbles to the gates, ready to see Demyx and get his shoes back on. But this appears to be the one day where he can't find the blond Gypsy on the outskirts of the city, so he contents himself with sitting down outside the gates and prodding gently at his blistered and aching feet.

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><p>"Zexy! How's your day been?"<p>

Zexion's head snaps up at the sound of that familiar light voice, and he almost has to physically restrain himself from standing up yelling at Demyx, because his feet _are in __**pain**_. After he takes a deep breath, the young boy hisses out, "My feet hurt. A lot."

Demyx tilts his head sympathetically, tutting gently as he examines Zexion's worn and battered feet from his standing position.

"I think they're bleeding," Zexion adds sullenly a few seconds later. "And they really, _really_ hurt."

"Well of course your feet hurt, Zexy. Freedom has its pain too. There's less protection from harm." Demyx smiles at him almost sadly, teal gaze soft and compassionate (and suddenly Zexion knows that there is something there that he needs to pay attention to). After a brief moment, the blonde hoists one of his feet up with a tinkle from the band of gold around his ankle, showing the heavily calloused underside to Zexion. "But you know what?"

Zexion responds absently as his fingers curiously explore Demyx's soles. "What?"

"It doesn't last forever. You get used to it, you know. Get new defenses. And in the end…" Demyx trails off, eyes lost in thought. After a few moments, Zexion pokes him in the foot.

"In the end what?"

Demyx shakes himself, smiling at the younger boy. "In the end, you're still free. Now," he offers his hand to Zexion. "Are you finally ready to come with me?"

"But where are we _going_?" Zexion asks for what has to be the hundredth time, but Demyx still only chuckles and keeps walking.

"Not too much further now," the blond calls over his shoulder. He brushes a branch out of the way with a satisfied huff and gestures Zexion into a small clearing with a grand gesture. "See? Here it is."

Zexion steps into the center of the glade with small steps, eyes wide. The sunlight drifting through the leaves is something Zexion hasn't ever really gotten to experience before. Not like this. Like this, the light itself is stained green-gold, and the leaves drift in the empty spaces between branches, and dust motes dance and swirl in the columns of light. Beneath them is the soft moss covering the ground, and the warm and wet smell of growing earth (_of Demyx_, his mind supplies, and he bats the words to the side without knowing why) wafts up to hang heavy under his fingertips.

There is song and noise all about him. A tinkling, bubbling stream provides a constant running commentary that is punctuated by the chirrups and calls of birds whistling by. Leaves in decadent greens and browns and flowers in orange drift down like dancers, spinning and settling and _beautiful_. Slowly, Zexion spins in a circle, taking it all in. He stops when he is looking at Demyx's face again, eyes wide.

Demyx's smile is soft. "Lie down. Lie down and let the wind and earth take you."

And Zexion wordlessly sinks to the ground, spreading out his hands and his sore, aching feet and digging in with clumsy appendages, imitating something he has seen Demyx do for countless days. The earth is soft and moist under his hands, seeping in between his fingers, and _god_, he loves it. He didn't expect this to feel _good_ and _right_ and if this is what Demyx was always talking about…

(if this is it…)

((…then he finally understands how Demyx seems to be such a _part_ of the earth. Like a living portion of it, not just standing on its surface.))

He closes his eyes, takes a huge deep breath. This isn't nearly as strange or disgusting as he thought it would be. The world could melt away here, between inhales of warm, damp earth smell and exhales of sunlight and wind. A tickling sensation prickles on his hand, and he opens his eyes again, looking down to see-

-possibly the biggest spider he has _ever_ seen. Right there. On his hand.

Zexion shrieks, flailing madly to get the damn thing off him, jittering into a sitting position and scooting around the clearing that Demyx led him too. Shaking once he manages to get it off, Zexion holds his hand close to his chest. His breathing is rough and stuttered and his eyes are wide as he stares, looking around nervously for the return of the massive, evil spider.

Across the clearing, Demyx breaks into peals of laughter, clutching at his stomach. "Your _face_," Demyx wheezes, giggling helplessly, "Oh Sun Above, you'd think you've never seen a spider before!"

Huffily, Zexion starts to reply, "Well, not one that b-"

"And then you just, hahahah, _threw_ it straight, oh god, across the clearing!" Demyx howls, rocking back and forth as he laughs endlessly, waterfall laughter cascading around the forest. Zexion feels his lips start twitching into a smile, and he covers it with his hand. Their laughter mingles with the late afternoon sunlight, streaming in through the leaves above.

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><p>For a summer, the world seems… perfect. Zexion meets Demyx every day outside the walls of the city and they run around together in the forest. (Zexion doesn't meet a spider again, so he never has to worry about mockery on that front.) When the bells ring the time for him to go back home, Demyx walks him to the gates and says good-bye then.<p>

So Zexion is understandably alarmed when he comes to the city's gate one afternoon to find… caravans. Wagons upon wagons gearing up to leave, and so many horses. And in the middle of it all, a gangly streak of blond, is Demyx, darting back and forth between different wagons to help with everything.

"D-Demyx?" he questions softly, almost unheard under all of the commotion.

It's like a string is pulled. Immediately, Demyx's head swings up and he locks eyes with Zexion. He runs forward, all lanky motion and awkward elbows dodging through the mess of Gypsies, his ever-present anklet chiming away. Stuttering to a stop in front of Zexion, he grins, waves a little. "My troop's heading off," he explains, gesturing over his shoulder at a large caravan of wagons. "I just wanted to say goodbye before we left."

"Y-you're leaving?" Zexion asks, aghast. Somehow, the thought that Demyx can leave, _will _leave, is completely foreign to him, unheard of. "B-but, you're… you _can't!_"

The taller blond boy tilts his head, curious. "Why not? I have to follow the troop."

Zexion sputters for a moment while he tries to think of an answer. "I… You… You just _can't_!" the young boy insists, hands fisting inside his jacket sleeves, nails digging deep into his palms.

With a sigh, Demyx shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Zexy, but I have to go with them. I have no place here." He looks over his shoulder at the shifting, colorful mass of Roma and bites his lip. "Look, I can't stay long. I have to help my family get ready to go."

(Zexion does not sniffle, he does _not_, because tears _certainly aren't_ gathering at the corners of his eyes, and if he raises a hand to brush something away, it's because he has an itch under his eyes.)

"Aw, Zexion, don't cry…" Demyx starts, lifting his hand slightly like he's going to put it on Zexion's shoulder. Behind them, someone calls for Demyx and the blond turns instinctively towards the voice. Zexion takes the time to square his shoulders and bites hard on the inside of his cheek, trying to quell the tears in his eyes.

There is a great rumbling as the caravans begin to move, and Demyx hisses out a word that Zexion would get his ears boxed for repeating. He wavers for a second. Then, his face turning a bright red, Demyx whips around to face Zexion. Leaning over, the blond boy swoops down to press a fast kiss to the side of Zexion's face. (Shocked, Zexion's only thought is _"I hadn't realized he was _that _much taller than me."_)

Pressing one hand to his cheek, Zexion stares at Demyx with wide eyes. Demyx turns even redder and leans over quickly, fiddling something by his foot. "Stop looking so sad, Zexy. I have to go with the family, you know that. Besides," and he stands up quickly, pressing something warm into Zexion's stunned hands. "It's not like you won't ever see me again."

"I…. I won't?" Zexion asks, befuddled and warm, his pulse pounding in his ears.

Demyx rolls his eyes, beginning to jog off. "Well duh, of course not. I'm coming back here next summer, like we always have." He speeds up, calling over his shoulders, "Don't forget about me! Don't wear shoes!"

Heart clenching hard in his chest, Zexion yells back, "Wear shoes during the winter! Even _your_ feet can't stand up to the cold!"

But Demyx only waves behind him before he hops easily onto the back of one of the wagons, earning himself a slap for being late to leave. Zexion's hands tighten. Feeling metal squeezing between his fingers, he glances down to see Demyx's anklet curled in his palm. Zexion pivots and slowly begins meandering his way back to the city, cradling the piece of metal close to him as though it were made of all the precious materials in the world.

The wind picks up down the road, and it smells of sunshine and travel.

(Zexion's thoughts that night as he tries to sleep are filled with the thought of the road, of good soil beneath bare feet, of laughing teal eyes, of an endless blue sky that is full of wind.)

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><p>Fin.<p>

I'm not too sure what to think of this… It sorta morphed on me while I was writing it. I mean, I still like it, but I'm… gah, I'm not sure.

Reviews are appreciated and responded to! Thank you for taking the time to read this!


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